DETROIT - Roughly 100 miles away from where she grew up, Amanda Cooper (4-3) stood in the middle of the octagon Saturday with tears in her eyes following the best performance in her UFC career. The Bath Township native destroyed her opponent, Amanda Magana (11-9) on the way to a TKO victory in front of friends, family and fans.

"I have so much emotion right now. I almost cried backstage," Cooper said after the fight, finally allowing her emotions to show.

Cooper dominated the strawweight (115 lb) fight from start to finish never really allowing Magana to get any momentum in the bout. Cooper landed 131 total strikes to just 17 from Magana, ending the fight at 4:37 into the second round.

Although she was on the undercard for the evening, Cooper received a rousing reaction from the crowd as her hometown status made her the fan favorite. Entering the arena to "Detroit Rock City" by KISS, Cooper played up to the crowd, basking in the adulation.

Earlier in the week, Cooper said she was expecting more than 100 family and friends to be in attendance. The excitement showed as Cooper was clearly amped up as she entered the cage, running around and playing up to the crowd.

As would be expected, Magana was booed heavily as she entered the arena. But she seemed to embrace the role as the bad guy, smiling as fans booed and at times playing to the crowd's anger.

That cockiness didn't last as Cooper pounced on Magana from the beginning, forcing the fight to the ground where Cooper controlled the rest of the round, nearly finishing the fight early on. At one point, Cooper said she actually told Magana to give up, but the veteran fighter would not.

"When I was hitting her in the first round, I actually asked her to stop but she kept going," Cooper said. "I said 'you're still a hero, just stop.' She actually did fight back a little more for a second."

The finish came when Cooper continuously pounded on Magana on the ground, forcing the referee to stop the fight. Cooper then stood up before falling back to canvas, clearly emotional following the victory.

Those emotions nearly came out before the fight backstage as she prepared for battle. Feeling like she was ready to cry, Cooper looked at her coach who sensed the moment and calmed her down.

"My coach said 'take all the emotion out of it.' He didn't even know I was thinking about crying, that's just what he was thinking at the time too," Cooper said. "I'm just proud of my coaches and how far we've come and being here in Detroit."

A former two-time Golden Gloves champion in the state of Michigan, Cooper began her career as a boxer taking her first fight when she was 11 years old. Now 26, Cooper has been involved in combat sports for more than 15 years.

After fighting a pair of fights in smaller MMA organizations in 2014 and 2015, Cooper was a contestant on the 23rd season of "The Ultimate Fighter" where she advanced all the way to the finals before losing to Tatiana Suarez via submission.

With this victory, Cooper says she's going to take a couple weeks off for the Christmas holiday before getting back to work with her coaches at Team SFS in Brighton. Ultimately, Cooper says she hopes to fight for the strawweight championship in February 2019. But she acknowledges that she has a lot of work to do to get to that point, but is looking forward to the challenge.